The One Thing You Need To Do If You’re Serious About Creating A Successful Pub, Hotel, Restaurant, or Bar

The One Thing You Need To Do If You’re Serious About Creating A Successful Pub, Hotel, Restaurant, or Bar

What does ‘success’ in your hospitality-based business mean to you – and have you achieved that yet?

For many bar and restaurant owners, the measure is loosely three-fold… bottom line profit, reputation, and a better lifestyle. But whilst many dream of success, few hospitality entrepreneurs ever achieve what they really want. And instead of enjoying amazing holidays, living in their dream house, and driving the car they’ve always wanted, they become a slave to their venue and even struggle to make ends meet.

It’s not fair, but hard work does not lead to success necessarily.

In fact, hard work – when it’s focused in the wrong direction – can actually harm your business and stifle your progress. If you’re a slave to your venue, working every hour you can to keep the business operational, then I’m sorry to say that there’s a high chance that you’ll never achieve the success you desire or deserve.

But don’t worry; it needn’t be this way.

In fact, there’s ONE THING you can do – starting immediately – that can unleash all manner of positive change into your business (and your life). And I’m going to share that it with you now.

Here goes…

You’ve got to fire yourself!

In all the years that I’ve consulted with hospitality businesses, I’ve found a common thread.

Far too many brilliant individuals are controlled by their ‘hospitality genes’.

I get it… I know you love to serve people and I know you love to roll your sleeves up and get stuck in. But if your focus is forever on what’s happening now, you’ll always firefight to keep things ticking over.

If you insist on working IN your business you will become blind to the bigger picture. You’ll suffer from a chronic lack of time too. As you know, something unexpected always crops up that demands your attention for at least an hour EVERY DAY. It’s no surprise that by the time you get home you fall into bed exhausted – wondering what you actually achieved after a full on day at work.

This is significant… Success doesn’t come from working all hours. As someone who works in the industry, I know this from personal experience.

Instead, success is rooted in strategic thinking – and you need quality, uninterrupted time to do this well. You can’t pay lip service to this activity or rush up some plans whilst you’re frantically trying to find sickness cover (or worst still, doing the jobs yourself).

And that’s why you need to sack yourself…

I’m serious.

Empower someone else to take some control of some of your management tasks as well as floor service and other daily to-dos. Put in slicker processes and invest your time and resources in staff induction, training, and development. Take steps to free your business from its dependence on you – urgently. After speaking with a number of very successful hospitality entrepreneurs, it’s clear that success only comes from introducing and constantly improving systems.

Ultimately, until you have a business that runs itself without you – you don’t have a business. Yes this is harsh, but it’s true.

And that’s why you MUST give yourself the time (and freedom) to work ON your business – every single day – and watch your life change.

Take control and set the course

Tony Robbins (a man who I spent a lot of time with back in the 1990s) said, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”

Yes, it can be a struggle to extract yourself from your day-to-day mindset. After all, that’s what you’re used to. It’s your comfort zone. It’s what you know and where you no doubt excel. But remember, whilst other people can do that stuff for you, only you can:

• Set the direction for your business
• Decide your values and your mission
• Take action to build your brand and your profile
• Design your strategy for finding (and keeping) new customers
• Choose where your business goes next

I said you needed to do ONE THING – if you’re serious about succeeding and this is it…

You must give yourself quality time and space so you can think, decide, and proactively shape the future of your business.

Take control of your business – so that it no longer controls you.

Small changes lead to big results

I read somewhere that when you do a little every day, you eventually achieve a lot.

And ‘little by little’ is a great approach to take. It’s not enough to have a spurt at working ON your business, and then revert back to your old ways. Ideas are hugely important, but they mean nothing until implemented. You’ve got to give yourself the time and space to make continual improvements. You need to work on your business every day until it becomes as habitual as the stuff you do now. You can start small – just 15 minutes or half an hour. And as you develop this ‘muscle’, gradually build up to a ‘power hour’ or even 90-minutes.

And by working ON your business, I mean investing your time in some of the following activities:

1. Create a customer loyalty scheme or referral programme
2. Process mapping the entire operational side of your business so it’s consistent
3. Send relationship-building emails to your customers (to stay on their radar and remind them to come back)
4. Create a customer avatar – so you know exactly who you want to attract to your venue
5. Create a strategy for collecting great guest reviews and testimonials
6. Plan your next marketing campaign
7. Script some videos
8. Craft some offers to tempt new (and old) customers in
9. Review or update your website
10. Plan your social media strategy
11. Write a sales letter
12. Just think and generate ideas

Just imagine the impact that activities like the ones mentioned above could have on your business, your lifestyle, and your sanity:

• You’ll be in the driving seat
• You’ll be creating your business – not simply accepting the business you get as it naturally evolves
• You’ll get more customers
• You’ll make more money
• You’ll probably create more time for yourself
• You’ll feel more successful

It’s in your hands

I never promised that the ‘ONE THING’ would be easy.

The concept may be super simple, but the reality of firing yourself and making a daily commitment to grow your business can be tough. Stuff will happen. You’ll get distracted. You’ll be tempted back to an operational role and your comfort zone. But the rewards for pushing through the pain are enormous.

And with the help of Hospitality Entrepreneur, the challenge will be a LOT easier. It’s our motto to help you control your business – before it controls you. As a member, you’ll have access to a growing collection of resources, templates, PDFs, and advice from some of the best consultants in the industry to help you learn and stay focused on what’s needed to achieve the success you desire and deserve.